Spoilers DSC Starships and Technology - Season Two Thread

Starting this one in light of the Short Treks starting this week, which are part of the second season production. SPOILERS for the 2018 Short Treks episodes through the end of the second season lie within.

"Runway" is up first! The trailer places it somewhere after the S1 finale (or in an interstitial moment while Discovery is heading from Earth to Vulcan), as Tilly is wearing a non-cadet insignia. The mess hall set further seems unchanged as the various fallen ships from TBOTBS are still displayed on the wall - with the war over, perhaps it's time to change them..?

I'll be looking for other production changes from the first season as well, beyond what's already been noted in the earlier S2 trailer. Who knows though if we can write all of them off as changes made while Discovery hung over Earth for however long the postwar denouement took in the S1 finale, if it's equipment Pike and co. brought aboard, or if we have to make up a Voyager-esque reason for why stuff like phasers and tricorders suddenly changed despite being 70,000 light years from resupply.

- It’s been noted in the DSC forum that the Discovery CG model appears to have been retextured, with the new aztecing fitting better to a ship this size. I tend to agree.

- Funnier still that the opening shot here is basically the same as the opening shot of the ship from 1x03, albeit in reverse – right down to a shuttle arriving / leaving. It’s like they used the same camera sweep in the program, tweaking it just a bit under the changed lighting, and hit “rewind”.

- It’s not EXACTLY the same though, as the contents of the shuttlebay are different. Smaller cargo crates, again making the ship look bigger. The shuttle is a Disco shuttle, and is oddly pitched forward as it leaves through the forcefield – inasmuch as the prison shuttle was pitched BACKWARD as it was tractored in.

- Inside we see our worker bees from the first season, but operating under both gravity and atmospheric conditions. And I hadn't noticed before, but there are two little berths for them on each side of the bay, up a deck or so from floor level (so they'd never have to be seen as a set piece when not in use). Neat - but it thus raises the question as to why the one bee we see park on the ground doesn't go back up to its empty berth? We clearly see one sans bee.

- And yet there's STILL no place for extra shuttles to disappear to, unless as I surmised previously that the huge Starfleet logo / landing pads are lifts to a lower deck storage and maintenance bay. We DO see these popup flashy hazard lights everywhere that weren't there before. When they shut the bay down, there were no other shuttles inside, and one had just left. The other two places where shuttles were often seen were cluttered with cargo pods.

- Uniform note: two of the NDs in the bay are wearing jumpsuits without any color appliques. These are the variant we see people wear under the away team armor, but ain’t no one looking like they’re away-teaming. What gives?

- The first words we hear are the ship’s computer announcing that “shift five” was over. Five? We’ve only heard about three shift rotations, and the occasional benefits of moving to a four shift. How would five work? Or is this some fancy team or group task designation instead of an actual shift?

- From the angle of the camera as the shuttlebay access doors close, you can easily see the gap in the floor and the little casters the doors roll on.

- Is Tilly still rooming with Burnham? With their respective promotions, you’d think they’d both warrant their own quarters. The not-Tilly side of her billet is almost bereft of decorations, but then again that’s pretty much Burnham anyway. A picture of the two of them together adorns her shelf (the other is bare), along with her various awards and medals, at least one of which has to be from the finale ceremony.

- I don’t blame her going to the mess hall when there’s a perfectly fine synthesizer slot in her quarters, just to literally get away from the image of her mom pacing around it. Unless the slot in her quarters is clothes only? I think we did see food come out of one once?

- Tilly's head noodle disappears and reappears between shots. It may have been part of Po as such. :P

- But as such, Po’s species has the ability to make their own clothes invisible too. We don’t know many invisible species (Jem’Haddar and..?) and I could surmise that we don’t see these guys again as they’re a monarchy and thus not likely Federation candidates, but…

- The APB on PO pretty repetitive. It says to keep her “alive and secure” twice, and then when Tilly reads that part, that text is repeated at the top of the APB for her! It also says “critical” three times. I guess they REALLY want her back.

- With all the “why the heck didn’t Tilly just report her?!” talk, in my headcanon of this consequence-less episode, Tilly just beamed her into the pattern buffer, called up security, explained everything to them, and materialized her in the brig for safe transport home, which is what Po realized she wanted to do anyway. It’s not like they beamed her to her home planet - which doesn’t know what transporters are, thus avoiding ANOTHER diplomatic incident, even if we’re already ignoring transporter ranges…

Definitely a ship, with long nacelles and tail fins. Federation, judging by the interior sets. Could it be a flashback?

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Non-saucer hull would tie to ENT nicely enough. Might be civilian or completely alien as well, though, assuming the displays are on a Federation ship (the Hiawatha?) but depict a ship other than the one the heroes are exploring. Sure, the Hiawatha (?) is wrecked, but there's that active red light dot there suggesting it might be a recent crash, with power remaining to the recent'ish-style interiors. Or is that red light from one of the landing party drones?

Also, the Hiawatha looks like a new ship class. Perhaps borrowing from the Malachowski class, but the secondary hull looks quite different. Sort of reminds me of this Excelsior-class prototype.

Also, stills are welcome moments of serenity in our hectic lives in general. Those "spherical devices" coming from the apparent bottom of the Discovery saucer (that is, the bottom of its central sphere?) appear to be the bow ends of the workbees. An odd place for them to emerge from, but perhaps just one out of many? The Tilly shortie reputedly showed beehives in the main shuttlebay walls. (Any stills of those?)

- I'm thinking we're not REALLY supposed to think about what circumstances led the crew to abandon ship with instructions for Zora to hold position until they came back. It's really just throwaway exposition to get to the meat of exploring the relationship between lonely man and lonely haunted spaceship. It could be an alternate universe, paradox timeline, or whatever. It's not important.

- As such, I'm more interested in WHEN this initial event happened. Whenever it was, it was after Zora had been installed, but before any other significant upgrades to the ship could be done. All the props, uniforms, etc. seemed to be contemporary with the show at the end of S1 / beginning of S2, for obvious production reasons. There were no other hints of any future events or reasons to change the "look" of the ship.

- Are we meant to believe that the Discovery is able to maintain herself, sans crew, for a thousand years in remote space? With no other external factors, there shouldn't be much degradation to the hull, but what about the rubber seals? Fuel? Micrometeroids? Look how beat up Pioneer 1X looked before it got blown up by Klaa, or that meat popsicle satellite from TNG "The Neutral Zone". They were uncontrolled, but still...

- How much of the ship was habitable? When Craft asked to go to the bridge, it was unpowered and apparently unvacuumed, so unless the dust in there was the remains of certain crew members it looks like Zora was operating with most of the lights turned off.

- Likewise, Craft hammocked up in the transporter room. There SHOULD be a ton of available crew quarters. Does he not want a view?

- I'm okay accepting that Zora could have spent a thousand years evolving into a proper sentient being. Would she have come up with any innovations in technology that we see? The already anachronistic hologram tech is one thing, but she was able to create an entire hologrammatic avatar (complete with tear ducts) at near the drop of a hat. We've seen Lorca and Ash whup holo-Klingons in the not-holodeck early on, is this extrapolating on that technology?

- I'm thinking we're not REALLY supposed to think about what circumstances led the crew to abandon ship with instructions for Zora to hold position until they came back. It's really just throwaway exposition to get to the meat of exploring the relationship between lonely man and lonely haunted spaceship. It could be an alternate universe, paradox timeline, or whatever. It's not important.

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Or then it's hugely important, and sets up why the spore drive becomes unavailable in the post-DSC era... It just is of no importance to the minisode itself!

- As such, I'm more interested in WHEN this initial event happened. Whenever it was, it was after Zora had been installed, but before any other significant upgrades to the ship could be done. All the props, uniforms, etc. seemed to be contemporary with the show at the end of S1 / beginning of S2, for obvious production reasons. There were no other hints of any future events or reasons to change the "look" of the ship.

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Or then Zora evolved on her own, after the warranties on all the anti-AI safeguards in the computer expired?

Given the vagueness of the adventure, Zora might also be an alien intruder.

- Are we meant to believe that the Discovery is able to maintain herself, sans crew, for a thousand years in remote space? With no other external factors, there shouldn't be much degradation to the hull, but what about the rubber seals? Fuel? Micrometeroids? Look how beat up Pioneer 1X looked before it got blown up by Klaa, or that meat popsicle satellite from TNG "The Neutral Zone". They were uncontrolled, but still...

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Don't we have precedent of sorts? That is, spacecraft of alien origin are often found adrift after centuries or millennia (or, in one case, hundreds of millennia!) and are none the worse for the wear. Supposedly, once Earth stops building expiration dates into its technologies for commercial reasons, most stuff just becomes immortal even without maintenance.

- How much of the ship was habitable? When Craft asked to go to the bridge, it was unpowered and apparently unvacuumed, so unless the dust in there was the remains of certain crew members it looks like Zora was operating with most of the lights turned off.

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Or the ventilation turned off at least. Or then turned on. Where do you get dust on a ship like that? Most of it would come from the crew, after all.

- Likewise, Craft hammocked up in the transporter room. There SHOULD be a ton of available crew quarters. Does he not want a view?

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I rather think he would not...

- I'm okay accepting that Zora could have spent a thousand years evolving into a proper sentient being. Would she have come up with any innovations in technology that we see? The already anachronistic hologram tech is one thing, but she was able to create an entire hologrammatic avatar (complete with tear ducts) at near the drop of a hat. We've seen Lorca and Ash whup holo-Klingons in the not-holodeck early on, is this extrapolating on that technology?

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Or the very same tech? How is it anachronistic? We never get a story where Jedadiah Nevahurd invented holograms in either 2345 or 1993 and galaxy-endangering hijinks ensued; the history of the technology is unknown, save for the now visually confirmed presence in the 2250s, 2260s and 2360s-70s, the constant evolution the audience can't quite put a finger on but the heroes find impressive, and the all-eras-encompassing lack of amazement when the heroes encounter holograms in general.